On identity: Neither here, nor there

Today, I’m posting over at Jen Luitwieler’s blog, as a part of her great series on identity. As she mentions in her introduction, Jen and I have been friends since the summer of 1990, “when we shared a house at the beach with a bunch of other earnest Bible packing college students.”

I, too, am so glad we are still friends. It’s impossible to think about “identity” without considering how that identity has morphed, accumulating and shedding over time. To know someone who has been there through that process—who got you then and still gets who you are now—is a big blessing.

Here’s a snippet of the post I wrote for Jen. Head over to her blog to read the whole thing, and make sure you check out Jen’s great writing while you’re there.

While it’s one thing to sum up a life of contradictions you’ve decided to embrace, it’s another thing to live out that dichotomy, day after day. Of course, I don’t get up every day and say “Here I go—another day to live out this dichotomy.” I just get up determined to be me as much as I possibly can. But every day I’m faced with the complexities of me, and the work of trying to communicate them to others.